Application Security
Applications are more important to businesses than ever. However, due to their rising complexity and a proliferation of entry points for threat actors, they are increasingly difficult to protect.
What is Application Security?
Application security is a collection of measures that organizations adopt to defend a broad attack surface that includes web applications, application programming interfaces (APIs), cloud-native apps, and operating systems.
Threats and Attacks
Common application security threats include:
Vulnerability exploitation: Attackers target vulnerabilities in applications to exploit a weakness in the way it was constructed. These vulnerabilities can be caused by numerous factors from development to deployment including insecure design, poor access control, security misconfiguration, and using components with known vulnerabilities and outdated components.
SQL injection: These attacks alter SQL queries by injecting malicious code that exploits application vulnerabilities. Attackers are able to modify database information, access sensitive data, execute admin tasks on the database, and recover files from the system.
Cross-site scripting (XSS): These attacks inject malicious code into a vulnerable web application to target the user, not the application directly.
Volumetric Distributed Denial of service (DDoS): Also known as Layer 7 DDoS attacks, threat actors can send large volumes of requests to overload the application’s resources with the intent of denying access to legitimate users.
API-based threats: Attackers target vulnerabilities in an API to exploit a weakness in the way it was constructed and gain access to the application as well as other systems and data.
Security Practices
There are several key practices for protecting applications from cyber threats. These include:
- Secure coding by implementing measures during the application development, design, and post-deployment phases to safeguard data and code from theft or manipulation.
- Authentication through a combination of passwords and biometrics or physical tokens.
- Encryption to prevent sensitive data, during transmission or when stored, from falling into the wrong hands.
- Regular security testing through code reviews and analysis tools.
- DDoS defense solutions that monitor the network for suspicious activity while keeping legitimate traffic flowing without the need for network appliances. Solutions that incorporate AI-assisted threat intelligence can stay ahead of emerging threats.
Get in Touch
It’s important to stay vigilant against the ever-present and evolving threat of DDoS attacks against your applications. Visit our threat intelligence research center for more information on DDoS defense in depth.